Charm Schticks (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

Actor

Stance

You are a character actor, well able to maintain a role. You like to immense yourself in your assumed persona, and seem able to change your personality and demeanor on cue.

When you use Acting & Disguise, you only need to make rolls when confronted with people familiar with your assumed role. You can also disguise yourself as a different race, gender or as a specific person as long as you can conceal any obvious physical differences; your method acting convinces people to overlook minor oddities in your appearance.

Ablative Clothing

Trigger Action (Result)

When in action, you have a marvelous ability to lose your clothes. Blows miss you by the sheerest margin, slashing your outfit. Branches conspire to rip your clothes. Claws gore clothes instead of flesh. This schtick is just as common among hunks and babes. Conan has it, as does many fantasy barbarians and bimbos in all genres.

Use this schtick to ignore the effects of any one physical attack or stunt. You can also use it to ignore difficult ground or other adverse terrain effects, in which case you can ignore such conditions for one Basic Action. This rips up your clothes beyond repair. You cannot use this schtick while naked or in ripped clothes.

You are as naked as they day you were born (or as naked as the genre will allow). Any function your clothes once had is gone. You no longer have any armor. This can serve to activate Bulletproof Nudity.

Acumen

Limit Break

You can gain insight into another person's motivations and personality. You must observe this person interact with others and succeed on an opposed Charm roll. If you succeed, you know what kind of person this is; understand his basic motivations and habits.

Beauty Mask

Inherent

The Crying Freeman has this schtick, and any character can have it in almost any juncture.

This schtick gives a sort of anonymity, even when not in disguise. Your features are idealized and forgettable. People can't seem to remember just exactly what you looked like when giving a description, tought they will readily recognize you if you meet again. They know someone was there, but they just can't think of what you looked like. ("He looked kinda like that movie star, I just forget who.") With a concentrated effort (A Limit Break), a Spot roll against your Charm allows them a basic recollection.

Betrayal

Limit Break

Use this when you are with someone who trusts you implicitly and has lowered his guard to you and who you can hold or embrace without them resisting you. It works both inside and outside of combat.

You can do a Trigger Action (Finisher) against your target, just as if you had just defeated him in combat.

Blunder About

Limit Break

The GM moves you up to a double move towards the most story-relevant hidden feature, secret door, trap, hidden clue, ambush or other surprise (good or bad). If there are no such features about, or the GM doesn't want to reveal them. you gain a Fortune point.

Captivating Captive

Trigger Action (Focus)

When you are an apparently helpless captive, you can focus.

Cute

Stance

There is something about you that makes others care for you. Depending on their personality, this might make them want to kidnap and possess you or just give you a smile and favorable treatment. You automatically have at least the minimal effect of Charm on everyone you meet, making them see you as special and pleasant to be with. This makes it easy for you to get into social events, make acquaintances, and generally be very popular in a non-domineering sort of way.

Fascination

Basic Action

By meeting someone's eye, you can fascinate them, distracting them and giving you an opportunity to interact socially with them.

This mainly eases first contact. A successful opposed Charm roll distracts your target and focuses his attention on you. He will follow you a short way and be willing to sit down to be seduced, bluffed or intimidated. This also works to distract guards, focusing their attention on you instead of on what they should be doing. Does not work in combat or action scenes, nor on creatures incapable of communication.

Fainting Flower

Trigger Action (Result)

Whenever you are affected by a stunt or take damage, you can choose to ignore the effect and instead swoon beautifully. This costs you all remaining shots for the round, but lets you ignore all damage while swooning. Enemies can use Trigger Actions (Finishers) against you, as long as you do not take further damage from them. It does not help against truly indiscriminate dangers such as a bomb or rockfall, tough it does help against normal area attacks. You cannot use this to escape confinement or whatever nefarious death-traps you might be placed in while in a swoon. Nor can you use this schtick to defend against attempts to capture, carry away, or otherwise take possession of you; in fact you are helpless against such attacks; your Dodge is zero against them for the remainder of the round.

Gambler

Basic Action

You have a knack, for gambling. Cinematic gambling has little to do with real-world gambling, and is less about folding at the right time or calculating odds and more about absurd luck. This schtick gives you the ability to draw just the right card to fill out your glorious hand or to give your race horse that little extra burst of speed.

Whenever you have a bet hanging on an event, you can modify chance in your favor, adding a Fortune die either for or against the event. In a gambling situation, you get a bonus die on your Charm rolls.

Inspiration

Trigger Action

You are an inspiration to others. Whenever someone else performs an action that directly affects your health or future well being, you can use Inspiration to give them a bonus die, just as if they had spent a Fortune point themselves.

Typical situations involve healing or aiding you in various ways, but also attacking enemies attacking you, or even defeating an enemy on your behalf. In fact, this schtick can even be used when you are not present, but only once per round in this case.

Look of Love

Limit Break

You have developed your sex appeal to the point where you can make a roll to Seduce someone as a Limit break, rather than taking an hour per roll.

Protector

Limit Break

You have a protector who looks out for your interest and can accompany you on adventures. Often somewhat dim witted, he is nonetheless a loyal defender and trusty companion. He generally thinks of himself as the true hero and you as the romantic heroine to be protected.

You generally get separated from your protector early in the story, but he generally reappears in the dramatic scene, having made his way into the den of evil to rescue you just as he is needed (when you take the limit break). Your protector need not be a specific person, and can actually be someone you have never seen before, or one of the villains henchmen overcome by your charms. After the rescue, he will expect some measure of love and devotion from you, just as if you had seduced him.

The GM constructs a protector as a named character using the Constructing NPCs section, using your Charm skill as the baseline, or simply uses an existing NPC of relevant ability.

Self-Made

Inherent

You are successful in business and thus financially independent. And you can do it again; if you was washed up on a pacific island, you would be king of the clamshells (or whatever) in a day or two.

Sense Lineage

Basic Action

You know a lot about lineage and tradition, and you know all the great families. When you meet someone, you can instantly tell that persons social standing, family and lineage. You can instantly tell a person with Blue Blood on sight. In cases where others try to fool you concerning their lineage or social status, you receive a +5 bonus on your Charm rolls to penetrate the deception.

Silver Tongue

Basic Action

People tend to tell you things, and you tend to learn more than they intended from what they say. This is active all the time, so the GM should let you make Charm rolls just to keep tabs on the latest rumors. Against more important game master characters, you can make an opposed Charm roll to make them say way to much, even if they are on their guard.

Spin Yarn

Inherent

By continually speaking, you may keep your audience captive with outrageous tales, distracting them. You can keep this up beyond all reason. You must first engage the victim in conversation, and then make an opposed Charm roll. You can target several people at once with no penalties, but use the highest value in the audience for a difficulty.

For each point of outcome, you keep going for a minute. You can then try again. If the outcome exceeds your victims' Mind, they give you some boon, either out of sympathy or in an effort to get away.

Failing the roll, combat, an alarm, and other direct threats and immediate situations will break your hold on people. You might have to use your Spin Yarn on someone who comes to interrupt, or lose your audience.

The Kiss

Trigger Action (Focus)

When you kiss someone you can focus. This can either be a basic action for both of you, or a Setback you scored against someone (and which can have other effects besides activating this power). The kiss should not be a trite action you do only to activate the powewrup; if it is the GM is free to say you failed to focus or that some more extreme action is required.

You can have other similar close personal interactions as an alternative for a kiss for this power: a grope, expose, vow, or other action sexually significant to your culture.